It's All A Matter Of Perspective

So I'm sitting here at my kitchen table, it's 9:15 a.m. and in a few hours I leave for an all-afternoon brand practice (where my alter ego 'Rock Star Babe' gets to pretend she's a carefree singer and not a harassed mother of two increasingly naughty monsters). The problem of course is that I've completely lost my voice. Yep. I can only manage a whisper and am stuffed with cold wondering how I'm going to pull this one off.

Last night Jay and I hosted an impromptu garden party with a few friends, and many 'Vodka Red Bulls' were ingested, and somewhere between drink number 2 and 3 (or was it 3 and 4?) I started croacking like a phone-sex worker before eventually graduating into 'crack-whore' status. By the time our last guests arrived all I could manage were pathetic sounding whispers....oops. Jay valiantly suggested that this was only a temporary affliction and that my voice would be right as rain by today...(he later changed his view to a 60/40 bet that I'd be okay and then this morning after I croaked 'good morning' he just shook his head sympathetically).

Egg and Dumps are in top form today depending on how you look at it - as naughty as ever. Dumpie has just discovered how to climb up in the dining room, extract the terrace keys from their hiding place behind the picture frame and unlock the metal security bars, letting he and his brother out silently like cat burglars. Speaking of burglars, I wonder how this bodes for future potential break-ins?

I don't know whether it's the fact that I'm now pretty much sole caretaker for these two that is perpetuating such constant antics here at home lately, or whether I just notice it more. The other day I found Egg and Dumps carefully transferring the contents of a full carton of freshly-squeezed orange juice into a half-empty milk carton...the overflow directed onto a cascading puddle in the middle of the kitchen floor. Then of course I found Dumpie using my kitchen mop to 'mop up' our dirty garden terrace and soaking himself in the process. Whilst all that was going on, Egg took the kitchen scissors (no matter where we hide them he always finds them) and meticulously sliced up my expensive sheet of designer wrapping paper I had just bought.

The other morning Jay walked into the kitchen to find that Egg had pretty nearly finished slicing a small granny smith apple into little segments with our giant stainless-steel chopping knife(!) and nearly hit the roof. I've had orange juice spilled on my computer keyboard (which luckily survived the assault), my gold vase broken in the front room from an impromptu game of catch, and last night I dejectedly surveyed my three large planting pots which had formerly held three young rose bush tree stems and now sat sinisterly empty thanks to the Dumps.

It just never ends I guess...you lose valued possessions, spend the greater part of your life repeating mindless, pointless but necessary domestic tasks in an effort not to live in a dump, and then by the time you get through the 'tough stage' you either get accidentally pregnant again or look in the mirror and realize that youthful glow has all but disappeared and staring silently back at you is a spent looking, middle-aged stranger with tired eyes.

Today however my life still holds promise and hope. I still have time to fool myself that everything is going to work out the way I want it to and that life is long and full and that the insistent midget currently poking me in the side and dirtying up my new skirt with buttery muffin-coated hands is not just about to wipe his streaming runny nose on me, and has not just deposited a whole plate of muffin crumbs in the newly hoovered front landing...